Lucid Waking

Somebody's Child

2010-12-13T16:26:00.000-08:00

Baby magpie at the park

I hate magpies. But many humans are worse

2010-04-22T00:22:00.000-07:00

Are genies born from volcanoes?

Eyjafjallajokull above

How Read is Fiction?

2010-04-14T00:26:00.001-07:00

Often, writing or reading is a better use of time than alternative activities. For example, in 4 or 5 hours of reading, you might be able to finish a very meaningful book that talks about many deep and interesting topics, which in turn enhance your existence and your understanding of real life, although it might temporarily take you out of it for just a few hours in the process. On the other hand, alternatively if you were to have spent those hours watching the news, cooking something you've cooked 100 times before, taking a walk around the neighbourhood, or even talking to someone you care about, but on a topic you've discussed 100 times before, you might not even remember these hours by next week, have not been affected by the activity and forget the memory altogether in a few years. So which is more real?

How to live forever

2010-04-12T22:39:00.000-07:00

Let us ignore religion(afterlives) and science (the gradual raising of the average age of life, and discoveries of genes that affect our mortality). In a metaphorical, abstract, or philosophical sense, is it possible to live forever and in what ways?

Examples I can think of include, the immortality, idolization, granted by fame, through notable accomplishments, or through a book, artwork, or other created object that lives on after death. Love is often described as being “eternal”, and . We could ask how and why it is that we exist in the first place, and if we were to answer it is consciousness, that grants us life, then what does our consciousness come from, but from the words and concepts gained through society, and if that world in which we live, we can transmit or contribute to transmitting to others, who live their lives, awakened (if only a little more) by our awareness, and our consciousness transmits to them, do we pass on a little of our life to them, and do they keep it alive, even before we die and afterwards? In what way is our body alive in the first place and if we said that it is because we can feel our body, because we can move it and effect it, that we know that it is ours and that we live, could we also be able to say that, if through empathy we could feel the pleasure and pain of others, of individuals and communities and situations, and if we could move and effect these people and things, would they not also be part of our identity, part of “us”, and while we are alive far outside of the limits of our own skin in our life, wouldn’t this go on even after we dies?

Does human desire to live beyond the known natural lifespan result from an incomplete ability to understand the depth of life and its potential to fulfil all natural desires?

Language and meaning

2010-03-11T22:41:00.000-08:00

If people had no names but only a single pronoun existed that meant me, you, we, he, she, they would our concept of ourselves and identity and self be radically different to how it currently is

Senses and Feelings

2010-01-14T14:30:00.000-08:00

Humans have five senses, but some animals have others which we don't have such as sonar. We are able to feel things through either emotions or physical feelings. Physical feeling relies on our nerve endings, and emotions on our consciousness, as well as a combination of other things such as our cultural understanding and perception of things, affects by physical comfort and situation, psychological state and others. Is it possible that there are also other ways of feeling which we don't know about in the world? For example, might a rock or a table or a TV set feel something, through some source other than the nerve endings which they don't have or the consciousness they presumably don't have either. If another way of feeling exists which we don't know about, it could also have repercussions for the possibility of artificial intelligence.

Limits of our existence

2009-12-26T16:28:00.000-08:00

The nervous system is the limit of our physical sensory perception however why is that assumed to be the range in which we each as individuals exist? For example, couldn’t we exist outside our bodies not during out-of-body experiences but also all the time

Risk Aversion

2009-12-09T13:32:00.001-08:00

When attempting to evaluate the risk that a situation poses- http://economics.uchicago.edu/pdf/Pesendorfer040306.pdf People fear what they don’t know- so the less you understand about a topic, when considering that as a path, the more fear regarding that path and the higher-risk that path is regarded and the lower likelihood of following it. If a certain level of lack of knowledge is reached (which may be different in different people due to variations in strength of fear reaction or of connection of fear to risk or willingness to take risks) is it likely that what is perceived to be high risk is in fact by definition in reality low risk as most of the risk that is perceived can be attributed to said lack of knowledge rather than real factors. How might this be represented (statistically, psychologically, mathematically or otherwise). How effective would this knowledge be (remembering that knowledge reduces fear) be in then altering responses to a given situation?

Are metaphors useful, and how might they be misused?

2009-12-06T00:02:00.001-08:00

numerical value

2009-10-14T22:47:00.000-07:00

Do mathematical concepts make sense outside of a hypothetical space? Especially, what are the problems with assigning numbers to concepts where the various processes of assigning these different numbers are subjective, as in economics?

Does one plus one equal two
-if you add two ponds together (equals one bigger pond),
-two humans a male and female might equal three (including a child),
-two rabbits (a male and female) might equal hundreds
-there may be one apple and another apple but they are not the same size or equal weight
-you might only want to eat one apple, so the second one is redundant or of lesser value than the first, or may effectively be the same thing as one appleas far as you’re concerned.
-there might only be one of something, for example one planet earth
- the value of a thing may be contested or undeterminable, or changeable
-a thing may either gain or decrease in value as time passes- the orange may rot or the orange tree grow bigger

This is not adequately appreciated in the use of figures such as statistics in explaining and analysing real world events. For example, market value is an almost meaningless average.

Analysis

2009-10-07T22:40:00.000-07:00

There is a painting on the wall, it is accompanied by a blurb containing analysis not written by the person who painted it. Does this add anything to our understanding of the painting? At an art gallery, is there any point in reading the blurb on the painting? What does this add to our understanding of it. Is there a point to reading it? There is such a thing as overthinking it. Sometimes it is better just to enjoy it, or to let the subconscious do the work. Sometimes it is better to interact emotionally with it, and sometimes it is good to think about it but do your own analysis of it. It might be of the most use to you if you let it remind you of your own experience and allow it to impact your views. For a painting such as Guernica, context may be useful, and may add to our understanding or enjoyment. In this situation the blurb would also explain that it is Picasso’s artwork and if you value it higher because of this, what does that mean? The analysis may also be inaccurate, biased, sloppily written or in some other way inferior, and may get in the way of our understanding of the painting. It may be best to seek information from a range of sources if more information than that gained by an organic reaction to it is required. However this is inconvenient and unlikely to happen except when the artwork arouses some particular unusual level of interest.

2009-10-06T20:49:00.000-07:00

Nikki s. Lee’s photographs of herself playing different roles put a spotlight on the fluidity with which people switch identities throughout their lives and even throughout each day. In fact, I think many people do this maybe even to a greater degree than she does, although without so much of the overt physical transformation that draws so much attention to what she is doing and makes it more open. Of course, she would also need to do this for the artistic appeal of her photographs. One question that she raises is who does an identity belong to if it is something that someone can pick up, assume, leave behind at will. Are these false identities that a person is pretending to be, or imitating, or are they as real as anything else. Or are any roles just totally honest and natural, to put it another way.
Below: Nikki S. Lee as an old woman, a punk, and a b-girl

I tend to feel that there are a lot of things, identity I tend to think few people create their own identity, most of the time we are playing pre-made roles, and in the cases where something new does happen, then although it may be a triumph of that individual who does it, their creation is now accessible and imitatable to anyone who comes across it, identities can be seen as part of culture rather than something that an individual possesses.

Is there such a thing as “being yourself” or is 90% of it just a string of influences and borrowed actions and words that nobody really owns or is a part of, but just are there once they are born through a combination of people’s interactions?

~She is one person and hundreds of people, a multitude of masks, we all have many faces, a sea of masks. How can you spot the real one amongst so many? They are reflected in mirrors. They divide and copy like shells. They morph. They are chameleons. They are shape-shifters.

Does the price paid to attain happiness determine its value?

2009-10-05T20:57:00.000-07:00

Individual Analysis

2009-10-05T17:45:00.000-07:00

Studying a person- future science fiction ideas- in the same way as a country, movement or ideology, society, etc might be studied, with in-depth analysis with an attempt to be objective, along with a collection of as widespread as possible information of all possible resources and no limits regarding thought of privacy, in fact there is no rationale for including these type of considerations whatsoever. In a world where the personal is easily accessible through online information and, where necessary to study an important person, even leaking or authorised access to private accounts, correspondence and tracking of movements that were made. What is there purpose of this neverending need to know all facts surrounding a situation? A belief that this will reveal truths about the world or that can be used in a way to help something (what- the improvement of humanity, people’s personal problems, commercial interests, the smooth functioning of society?) is the reason. Whether this is true or not is unimportant- at a certain point perhaps the limit of what additional knowledge could reveal is reached however, the processes and the culture which has become entrenched, the culture of knowledge, revealation, analysis, attempted objectivity combined paradoxically with open contestations of different subjective interpretations with overt ideological agendas. The subject is studied ironically or as a part of a disturbing expose on an exaggeration of one tendency/pathway currently visible and a hypothetical of how it will quite possibly progress over time

An individual, let us call her Ally. Her personality is a type to be categorised as most things in this world are categorised. The influences on her, her environment, her history, can be predicted to impact on her in heavily statistically documented ways. This could include her parents’ eating habits for example, the performance level of her school. Variables have been factored in, and as this is done, do they lose the essence of what a variable is, what the word vary might imply, the idea that they might lie outside of the ordinary in unpredictable ways? The variables have been accounted for and so, in our calculations, have been compensated for. There is an attempt to understand the relationships between the variables, in order to backchart the cause of the effect, to eliminate unfavourable risk factors and increase the average likelihood of positive outcomes, (by somebody’s standards). The variables have been compensated for, and it is important, in the future, that there not be any real variables, any unpredictable results.

At this point, is Ally understood, as a result of the transparence gained on how different influences and causes will shape her? Or does she begin to cease to exist, as the inability to tread any path other than one already predicted (if all possibilities have been accounted for by that stage) make her devoid of free will and the inability to create? Or is it that if she were to herself seek to be understood, she would tell quite a different story, and her own voice has been drowned out?